Chye-Ching Huang and Chad Stone:
Average Income in 2006 up $60,000 for Top 1 Percent of Households, Just $430 for Bottom 90 Percent:
[T]he share of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent has increased sharply, rising from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 20.0 percent in 2006. Not since 1928, just before the Great Depression, has the top 1 percent held such a large share of the nation’s income. (See Figure 1.) In 2000, at the peak of the 1990s boom, the top 1 percent received 19.3 percent of total income in the nation....
Income gains have been even more pronounced among those at the very top of the top 1 percent. The incomes of the top one-tenth of 1 percent (0.1 percent) of U.S. households have grown more rapidly than the incomes of the top 1 percent of households as a whole, rising by 58 percent, or $1.8 million per household, since 2002. The share of the nation’s income flowing to the top one-tenth of 1 percent increased from 6.5 percent in 2002 to 9.1 percent in 2006. This is the highest level since 1928...
Guess what, Brad--the economy's shifted to one that promises tournament rewards for entrepreneurial innovation. With the way we are now, a small percentage of laboring innovators contribute a great deal to productivity and are rewarded for such. The venture capitalists win as well. The rest of us are just enjoying fruits of their labors and innovation. It's great to be dragged along in such a wondrous economy. Of course, being dragged along as a member of the chattering class doesn't bring the great rewards of innovation, but it does allow us to live comfortably. It is tougher for supermarket checkers, but then again, where is the increase in productivity of supermarket checkers? Checkers' skill levels haven't increased much, but there's a much greater capital investment surrounding them. Why should we academic chatterers or the checkers expect much growth in income if we're not contributing much in growth in output?
Posted by: Adam | August 16, 2008 at 03:35 AM